High performance solid propellant fueled rocket motors require burning rate catalysts to achieve fast burn rates. Presently, n-hexylcarborane (NHC) is considered to be one of the most suitable burning rate catalysts for solid propellant fuels. NHC production involves reacting 1-octyne with decaborane-14. The price and quantity limiting factor in the supply of NHC is the lack of an industrial process for synthesizing large quantities of decaborane inexpensively.
The production of decaborane-14 (B.sub.10 H.sub.14) by pyrolysis is the usual commercial source of this precursor material for NHC. The complexity of the chemical engineering for the usual commercial source method for B.sub.10 H.sub.14 in large quantities is very expensive. The high expense relates partly to the fact that thermal (pyrolysis) methods of influencing chemical processes lead, mainly, to the excitation of all degrees of freedom of the molecule. Both external (translational) and internal (electronic, vibrational, and rotational) degrees of freedom are usually in thermodynamic equilibrium. In addition to there being an unproductive waste of energy, reactions with equilibrium excited molecules characteristically proceed in the direction of the breaking of the weakest bond, completing a considerable percent of back reactions, completing many side reactions, and producing polymers, many of which are not the desired product.
Desirable would be a method for chemical conversions of substances wherein the emphasis of influence is on the individual bonds, not on the molecule as a whole. Considerable savings should result from a method which does not effect the molecule as a whole wherein numerous undesirable side reactions are initiated and completed.
Particularly desirable would be a method for inducing a chemical reaction by irradiation to achieve production of a desired compound of high purity and high yield.
Therefore, an object of this invention is to provide a method for producing decaborane-14 from diborane by laser induced chemistry.
A further object of this invention is to provide a method for producing decaborane-14 from diborane by laser induced chemistry wherein the method is carried out at room temperature to produce the desired product of high purity and high yield.